Reflections
by pamlin
Summary: Standard disclaimer: not mine, not making any money. This is sort of AU; these are three different stream-of-consciousness stories dealing with the aftermath of Krueger and answering some questions I always had: How did Nelson not get arrested for shooting Crane? How did Crane overcome the loss of trust resulting from that? That sort of thing...
1. Chapter 1

Jack O' Lantern

The moon hung oppressively in the sky, the color of a pale, grinning Jack o' lantern, shedding an eerie light over the century-old Victorians in the neighborhood. They had been stately mansions built by prominent families during the Gilded Age, but few remained in the hands of their original owners today. The Morrises, Blankenships, and DeLancys were all gone now…

Lieutenant Commander Chip Morton sat on the balcony of the home he had inherited from Captain Phillips, and wondered if his friend, Lee Crane, were looking up at the same moon.

A captain held his boat together with the force of his personality. The trust and loyalty, the hopes and fears of the crew were invested in the figure of her captain. But Krueger had murdered that connection, and Seaview had limped back to Santa Barbara, a damaged and foundering boat.

Chip had tried to convince Lee that he needed support, but the truth was, the whole boat did. They had faced the stuff of nightmares before, but Krueger alone had taken hold of their souls, possessing them like a demon from hell…

Literally, in Lee's case. Perhaps in Admiral Nelson's case as well. There could be no other explanation for that gunshot fired in full view of the crew. If the Navy ever found out…

They had demanded Seaview's logs as soon as she'd docked. Every time Chip looked at Admiral Nelson, he could see that the older man was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even though he was retired and a court martial was no longer a threat, criminal charges could still be filed. Worst of all, to the passionate scientist who had designed her, Seaview could be taken away. The Navy only had to demonstrate that the admiral was unfit. Once they knew that he had shot and nearly killed Seaview's captain, once the ghosts the boat was trying to bury came to light, they would have that proof in spades…

So Chip – in the utmost secrecy with only Sharkey to aid him – had taken a desperate measure to save the admiral. He could never let Lee or the admiral know that he had falsified the logs, carefully removing all evidence of ghosts or the admiral's guilt; he admired them both too much to let them carry that guilt. But if the Navy ever found out about the lies, not only his career, but the admiral's would be destroyed.

He understood that; he knew what he faced. But sometimes when he caught the haggard look in Nelson's eyes, it was almost more than he could bear to stay silent in the cause of justice.

He hoped Krueger had been damned to the uttermost pits of hell.

Chip shivered in the night air. Will had warned him that he still wasn't one hundred percent. The mysterious illness that had swept the crew in the days after the admiral had returned with Lee and the young woman, had taken its toll. Will refused to give it the name that Lee had given it: Ghost sickness. But it was well-documented in Polynesian culture that ghosts were like a virus. Too much exposure could lead to life-threatening illness…

Chip hadn't succumbed to the disease until after they had vanquished both Krueger and Lani. For the young woman who had come back with the admiral had turned out to be possessed by Krueger's lost love, looking for her own taste of immortality. She hadn't been the savior she had tried to pass herself off as. She had been a demon in her own right… But that was in the past, and he struggled to forget it, struggled to forget that - just for a moment, and without ever acting on it – he had forgotten Maggie in the lure of those devil-dark eyes…

The wind picked up, whistling around the corners of the old house. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket and he considered ignoring it. But he couldn't; almost of their own volition, his fingers plucked the phone out. He looked down at the screen and sighed. Admiral Nelson, just as it had been every few hours since Lee had vanished in the middle of the night, running from his own demons. It was almost as if – having lost one of his protégés – the admiral meant to keep the other one under his hand. Chip reluctantly took the call.

"Yes, sir?"

"You'd better not be out on that balcony, lad." The admiral's voice was gruff, but underneath a tone of hollow loss lingered. "You know what Will said."

Chip answered the underlying loss, ignoring the thin layer of gruff concern. "He'll be back, sir."

Silence on the other end. Then the admiral cleared his throat. "Don't sell yourself short, son." With a click, the call ended, leaving Chip feeling obscurely guilty.

He rose and moved to the railing. The street was quiet and dark except for the glimmer of a jack o' lantern on the porch next door, a faint echo of the full moon's eerie light. He stared at it without seeing it, aching for Maggie. But too much hung over his head now. If those logs didn't pass muster, his fall would be hard and fast. He couldn't set Maggie up for that…

The night was getting colder; Chip turned to go inside. The jack o' lantern's wicked grin pursued him, a symbol of his own demons.


	2. Chapter 2

A Second Chance

Admiral Harriman Nelson sat in the dark; it suited his dark mood, and the dark outcome he expected. He still couldn't believe that he had thrown everything away: Seaview… His career… Lee's friendship and the crew's respect…

Soon now, he expected to see the Navy brass beating on the Institute's gates. It surprised him a little that they hadn't come yet. They couldn't let this pass. He had shot Lee Crane and nearly killed him; he hadn't even taken responsibility for it. Instead he had claimed that a ghost had made him do it. True, of course, but the Navy wouldn't believe in ghosts. The essential facts of the case were these: Nelson had shot Lee, and then used Chip to escape the uncomfortable consequences. He had run, escaping Seaview, to go to some tiny island in the Pacific. At least, it would look that way. Oh, he would be going down, no question of that. They might not press charges, since Lee had lived, but there was no doubt at all that they would take Seaview…

Jiggs would try to help, but Nelson had no intention of letting him. He wouldn't take his friends down with him. If he had any friends left after this fiasco…

But he would have to figure out how to shield Lee and Chip: Lee, because of what he had done while possessed by Krueger, and Chip because he had himself an accessory to Nelson's own crimes. So much to do… And the hours were running away from him. It was tempting to sit here in the dark and brood, especially after that last phone call to Chip…

His lads knew him too well. He was concerned about Lee, afraid that the breach between them could never be healed. He had been agonizing over that since Lee had left. He'd thought he had hidden it well, but apparently he hadn't been as cool as he'd thought.

And yet Chip did sell himself short. The entire crew had disapproved of Nelson's relative freedom after he'd gunned down Lee, but they had followed Chip's lead. Their confidence in his leadership had overcome their new distrust for the admiral. And Chip's loyalty in the face of almost insurmountable odds had brought them safely home. Time and again, he'd shown his quality, but never so clearly as now. Yet he continued to downplay his actions and achievements and efface himself from the story, content to let others grab the glory.

Nelson snorted in bewildered contempt. It shouldn't be allowed, but he had allowed it anyway. The whole mess was his fault. He pulled the phone toward him, but didn't lift the receiver. There were calls he had to make to put things in order. The logs had been in Navy hands for almost a week. They would surely act soon, and he wouldn't be taken by surprise.

He rose and went to the window, looking out at the ethereal moon that hung in the sky. Hunter's Moon, Lee would call it, and the name wakened an echo in his mood. He certainly felt hunted right now. Turning away, he picked up the phone. Jiggs would have news, and it was important to know when the Navy would act. He had to get everything at the Institute battened down, just in case.

Jiggs and Henry-Anne were night owls. They would still be up; he dialed Jiggs' number and waited as the phone rang…

"Harry!" Jiggs's voice was almost jubilant; a far cry from the stern note he had expected to hear. "Don't worry, you'll get your logs back tomorrow. I just had to read them again." He chortled, and then yelled, "It's Harry! Who else would it be?" After a moment, he said, "Henry-Anne says hello, and invites you for supper tomorrow. Say you'll come. I have to know how on earth you manage to open a can of worms every single time you go on a cruise!"

Something wasn't right… Nelson cautiously thought out his reply. "Of course, I'll come. So… the logs passed muster?"

"They opened a few eyes, let me tell you. Crane going to be okay?" Jiggs was apparently drinking… Nelson heard the sound of him swallowing. "Captain Parker swears that it wasn't an ONI mission gone wrong. Why did Crane go ashore on that rock in the ocean anyway?"

How to answer that when he didn't know what was in the logs… And why didn't he know what was in the logs? Nelson scowled, glad that Jiggs couldn't see him. "All in good time, Jiggs. Tell Henry-Anne I'll come, if I'm not arrested tomorrow."

"Well, maybe you should be, considering the scrapes you get into, but I don't think you have to worry about that!" Jiggs called out to his wife, then said his goodbyes. Nelson stared at the phone blankly after his friend hung up.

It didn't take long to put two and two together. Someone had falsified the logs; the tale had to have been a good one to pass muster, and there was only one person who could have done it. Lee was out of commission from a gunshot wound and that mysterious illness the ghosts had brought. The admiral himself had been exhausted; getting to Lee and getting him out of a bad situation hadn't been easy and it had required almost all the strength Nelson had. No, there was only one member of the command team who could have changed those logs. Nelson closed his eyes, deep in thought. _Chip, lad, what have you done?_

No time to worry about what had already been done. And Nelson knew why it had been done. The question now was how to shield them all from the fallout should the lies ever be discovered. Reinvigorated, Nelson got down to work.


	3. Chapter 3

Moon Fox

The moon hung heavily in the sky, shedding a pale light over the wilderness. Huge and ominous, it dominated the stars, and its color – like a pastel orange marker that had been smudged by someone's fingers – was echoed in the fall foliage.

Commander Lee Crane breathed a quick prayer of gratitude for the full moon. Under its faint glow, he felt safer than he had in several weeks.

The Yosemite wilderness under an October moon was no place for ghosts. And Lee had had more than enough of ghosts for a lifetime. He tilted his head to look up at the moon.

The Native Americans had named the October full moon the Hunters' Moon. They had understood that it represented their last chance to fill their larders before winter chased the game away. They felt a sense of urgency as they hunted beneath it that was belied by the still serenity of the moon herself. Odd how humans hung so much legend and folk wisdom on the moon, yet for all their stories, the moon still sat, ignorantly naïve, in the night sky…

Something moved under the trees, a vague black shaped that caught Lee's gaze and thundered in his heart. For a moment, he drew breath in and out, fighting to steady himself. _Krueger is gone. Lani is gone._ He watched the trees alertly, practicing meditative breathing. _The ghost sickness is gone. No more need for worry… Or fear…_ He could admit to himself that he had been afraid. From the moment he'd looked up to see Admiral Nelson pointing a gun at him, he'd lived in fear. Krueger had done what no enemy had ever been able to do: tear down all his defenses and turn him inside out.

Admiral Nelson had advised this trip; Lee, looking at that newly aged face, had taken the advice, realizing that Krueger had taken a toll on others as well. It would be difficult to work his way back to trust, respect, and friendship with the man who had become a mentor to him. Krueger had destroyed that.

Chip Morton had argued that Lee shouldn't be alone, that the company of a supportive friend would help him get through. But they both knew that there were secrets between even the closest friends; dark terrors that weren't meant to be shared. Those terrors were the reason that Lee had left in the dead of night to come here where even the memories of ghosts couldn't find him.

The shadow under the trees shifted again, then stepped hesitantly out into the moonlight. A fox, its red coat silvered by the moonlight, lifted its nose to the wind.

Lee's lips turned slightly upward. A fox was a lucky sighting. They generally hid themselves away, too frightened of humans to expose themselves. But this one seemed to be a brave little fellow. It sniffed the wind, then suddenly turned to look right at Lee.

Tawny eyes looked into his, liquid and alert and wise. Lee stiffened, afraid to move, afraid to scare it away, but it stepped daintily forward, until it stood only a few feet away, its gaze magnetic. Lee held his breath; he was good, a silent effective tracker, but he had never been this close to a fox. They were notoriously elusive animals. Even the slightest sound could send it fleeing for shelter.

Second after second, they stared into each other's gaze in a kind of limbo. The fox's eyes seemed to morph into his father's eyes, and his father's voice came whispering on the wind. _You are stronger, son. You have proven that you are stronger. Let it go. Let the dead bury the dead._

Then the eyes shifted again, their color changeable in the moonlight, hauntingly blue now, rousing the echo of his last conversation with the admiral. _Take some time. Work through your demons. And I hope…_ The strong voice had broken there, and Lee had suddenly realized that Admiral Nelson was old… Every line in his face impressed itself on Lee, and he knew suddenly that he needed to make things right, before it was too late. The admiral had certainly pulled the trigger, but the blame was squarely on Krueger. Anger rose into Lee's throat; Krueger had tried to destroy more than a boat and a crew. He had tried to destroy a family. And he had nearly succeeded because Lee had chosen to fixate on his fear. That ended now.

The fox's eyes seemed to grow younger, less emotional, and yet Lee knew the whirlwind of emotions that hid behind the inscrutable façade. And anyway, the voice bled emotion in ways that perfect poker face did not. _You cannot do this alone. Isn't that what you told me after Argentina? You can't be right then and wrong now. There is no double standard here. I can help you, even if all I do is listen._ A pregnant pause, then _Don't go it alone this time, Lee. Please…_

The eyes melted back into the liquid amber eyes of the fox. As if it understood that it had served as a surrogate for the three men Lee admired most, the fox cocked its head and sat, curling its bushy tail around its paws.

Lee sat, too, busily planning his most important mission yet. Krueger didn't get to win this one.

He cocked his head, echoing the fox; a fox had been his father's spirit animal. Lee contemplated the one that sat in front of him with a half-smile. "Thank you little brother."

The fox yawned, rose, stretched, and trotted off under the full autumn moon.


End file.
